In March, the Women’s Professional Soccer League became the first sports league to allow players to send short messages to fans over the popular social network Twitter during games. The lure of this experiment was obvious: Twitter has a huge, fast-growing user base, and sports figures are some of the most widely followed users. NBA star Shaquille O’Neal, for example, is followed by nearly 1.9 million Twitter users.

But Thomas sees Twitter as empowering players as well: “[A]thletes are taking re-ownership of their image. Twitter is a place for them to say what they feel, deny false claims, offer some quick insight on an upcoming game, maybe even quell a controversy without the use of traditional outlets.”

As with any new technology, however, the power of Twitter must be carefully harnessed. As several recent announcements and incidents show, sports leagues are struggling to balance the potential for player-fan engagement with the inevitability of embarrassing situations.

An unnamed NFL team executive told The New York Times that players should “not tweet about anything more than what you are eating.” Apparently even that harsh admonition is too permissive, because this week the Chargers fined cornerback Antonio Cromartie $2,500 for complaining about training camp food over Twitter.